December 23rd, 2020. Stay on target.

It’s the day before the day before Christmas and I’m not ACTUALLY just going through the motions. I Love the lights, I Love the music. It’s not very rock star of me.

Not that anything of this year has been very rock star. Stuck at home with the cat. Learning about streaming protocols. Zoom meetings. Watching the blue jay out the back window because it’s a different colour than anything else out there. A world of browns and dying greens that I can’t distinguish on the best of days.

Heather will be over later and I think we’ll go on a donuts and tequila run – because sometimes you’ve got to Live it up.

Normally this week would feel like a strange change. Probably gearing up for some sort of New Year’s SOMETHING – or at least Kristen would definitely have a gig. I think the rest of us have slowly been happier taking the night off and hunkering down, avoiding the drunks and the noise.

Well, this year has been 110% successful. Hunkering down, avoiding the drunks and the noise.

Listening to the news this morning it seems more of the same. As I check in with friends there’s a sense of it all closing in though. More friends testing positive. For most it’s come and gone. A week or two with a bad flu. For some it’s longer. For some they’re flat on their back. For a few it’s been a battle to breathe that kept them down and out for a month or more and it sounds truly terrifying. I’ve struggled to breathe for a couple of seconds when something goes down the wrong tube – or for longer as I dove deeper than I thought I did – or the longest ever in a stupid fist fight when I was a kid. I remember the first time where breathing wasn’t something I could take for granted – falling out of a tree flat on my back – I don’t think I’d encountered the term “knocking the wind out of you” yet but when I did I finally knew what had happened.

Lying on my back in the grass trying to answer “are you okay?” and just gasping air in and in and in and in…

Another friend quarantined, tests negative.  Another friend who doesn’t know where he could’ve picked it up, tests positive. Another friend finally back on her feet swears she’ll record a new song and send it to me when she had enough breath to get through it.

Sorry. I meant to be talking about Christmas. Somehow the stiller I sit the faster it all spins.